Capturing the world's oldest things on film

WHAT'S the oldest living thing you can think of? Your 96-year-old gran or that craggy tree at the bottom of the garden? Whatever springs readily to mind, it probably won't be nearly as old as the organisms Rachel Sussman photographs.

(Image: Rachel Sussman)

Sussman has travelled the world capturing images like this picture of
a llareta plant in the Atacama desert in Chile. A relative of parsley,
it looks like moss but actually consists of thousands of flowering buds
on long stems which are so densely packed together they can withstand
the weight of a human. Some parts of this particular specimen are
thought to be more than 3000 years old, though we don't know enough
about the plant to estimate its lifespan.

Sussman has only one
criterion for her subjects - they must be older than 2000 years. Having
found a suitable candidate, usually via word of mouth or internet
research, she tracks down biologists studying it. Sometimes this is
easy, but often there is not much scientific interest in that species,
in which case she relies on local knowledge to get an estimate of the
specimen's age.

Sussman's first subject was the Jomon Sugi,
a Cryptomeria tree on Yakushima Island, Japan. Legend has it
that the tree is 7000 years old, but Sussman has found carbon-dating
studies indicating it is a mere 2200 years old. The oldest thing she has
photographed are Actinobacteria from Siberia that DNA analysis has
put at between 400,000 and 600,000 years old.

Many of Sussman's
curiosities have one thing in common: they are found in extreme
environments and are uniquely adapted to their habitat. They also tend
to be very slow-growing. A prime example is the bristlecone
pine. "This looks half dead most of the time, perhaps with just one
branch that appears to be alive," says Sussman. "It shuts down all its
non-essential processes."

As for the llareta, its biggest threat
is humans - local people use it as fuel and to make medicine.